Advances in microprocessor and related technologies have led to wide spread deployment and adoption of numerous general purpose as well as special purpose computing devices. General purpose computing devices, such as servers and desktop computers, are now endowed with computing power that was once reserved for the most expensive high end computers, requiring special conditioned environment to operate. At the same time, advances in networking, telecommunication, satellite, and other related technologies have also led to increase in connectivity between computing devices, making possible sophisticated networked computing over private and/or public networks, such as the Internet. Examples of these sophisticated applications include but are not limited to Voice over IP (VoIP) and multimedia applications.
Recently, continuing advances in wireless communication technology have also made wireless connectivity ubiquitous. Typically, for wireless networks, e.g. Wi-Fi, a client Mobile Station (STA) connects to an Access Points (AP) to obtain network service. STA could be considered “roaming” from one AP to a new AP for a number of reasons. With VoIP and multimedia applications, good quality of service requires that a STA be able to quickly establish connection with a new AP for continuing network service without interruption. Further, the new AP should be able to provide commensurate level of quality of service for the applications running on the STA as the previous AP.